


you may grow to love this person but remember they are not yours to keep (their purpose isn't to save you but to show you how to save yourself)

by kayteedancer



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, F/M, Gen, Growing Up, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-04-23 03:02:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4860554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayteedancer/pseuds/kayteedancer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Hermione thought that God must hate her.  Or maybe Fate, or whatever governs the universe.  Anyway, the giant thing that pulls the strings of life hates her.  She had always had so much trouble making friends and now when she had just gotten a friend, her first friend other than the characters in books, something just had to happen to mess everything up.  Hermione was 10 years old, just a day before turning 11, and she had made and lost her first friend ever on the same day."</p><p>Ten times Hermione Granger's life intersects with the Doctor and the world shifts on its axis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The First (Age 10)

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there! It's been a while... 
> 
> I should be working on "you always fall for the rascal (or the guy who's got a little bit of the devil in him)" and I am, I promise!!! It's just taking me a while longer than I anticipated to get the next chapter out and the rest of them written. 
> 
> In the meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this! I got this storyline stuck in my head and needed to get it down before I lost it. This story will eventually be around 10 chapters long, but like "rascal" I don't have all the chapters written already. So... bear with me?
> 
> The title quote is from Lang Leav, who is amazing and her way with words is legendary.

Hermione thought that God must hate her. Or maybe Fate, or whatever governs the universe. Anyway, the giant thing that pulls the strings of life hates her. She had always had so much trouble making friends and now when she had just gotten a friend, her first friend other than the characters in books, something just had to happen to mess everything up. Hermione was 10 years old, just a day before turning 11, and she had made and lost her first friend ever on the same day.

Jessica was new in school, which suited Hermione fine because no one had the opportunity to tell Jessica how weird Hermione was, or that she shouldn’t talk to Hermione. And Hermione felt a tiny seed of hope bubble up in her chest that this girl could be her first friend. Jessica was sitting at the benches with a book in her hands, her glasses slipping down her nose as she read. Hermione couldn’t see the title of the book but sat down next to the girl anyway, twisting her own copy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in her hands. At the sound of Hermione settling in next to her, Jessica looked up and pressed her glasses back up her nose while she smiled a gap-toothed smile at Hermione.

“Hi! I’m Jessica Atwater. What’s your name?” the girl declared brightly, her hands wound tightly around the cover of her own book. Hermione smiled back a bit timidly, trying not to scare the other girl away, as her grip slightly relaxed on her book.

“I’m Hermione Granger,” Hermione answered softly, totally unlike her normal self. “What are you reading?”

“I’m reading The Joy Luck Club!” Jessica exclaimed, turning her whole body towards Hermione in excitement. “It’s a new book my mum got me and it’s really good! Have you read it?”

Hermione hadn’t read it yet, she was currently working her way through Shakespeare’s plays, but she didn’t let that deter her. “No, I haven’t! I’m reading Shakespeare right now, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. What’s it about?”

Jessica started babbling about the book, and Hermione could not tell you what it was about or what Jessica said. She was too happy that she had a companion for the first time, someone that liked books just as much as she did and wanted to talk about them just like she did.

For all that Hermione put on the show of a swot in class, she was not really like that outside of a teacher’s view, something her classmates didn’t know. So instead of trying to interject her opinion at every opportunity, Hermione just sat there with a small smile in place and let the glow of friendship and Jessica’s voice wash over her.

“Oi, New Girl, what are you doing with the freak?” Hermione heard a cracking voice call out and barely suppressed a wince as her hope seemed to freeze in her chest. Jessica stopped what she was saying abruptly, shifting her gaze to David, the largest and most persistent of Hermione’s bullies.

“I’m sorry? Did you just call Hermione a freak?” Jessica questioned, sliding her glasses up her nose again and narrowing her eyes just a bit. Hermione couldn’t stop herself from cringing this time as David switched his gaze to her.

“Yeah, I did. She’s a freak, always sucking up to teachers and actin’ like a swot,” David growled and his goons laughed behind him. Hermione shrank into herself a bit, curling protectively around her book. Maybe if he didn’t see she had a book, he would leave her alone.

“She’s not a freak!” Jessica defended her, standing up in front of the boy and leaving her new book on the bench next to Hermione. “Just because she likes reading and school and is better at both than you doesn’t mean she’s a freak! It means that you’re a bully for calling her a freak and making fun of her.”

Hermione glanced up through her eyelashes at Jessica, her heart warming at the display of friendship on the other girl’s part. Jessica looked back at Hermione with a small smile before turning and glaring at David. “Now go away, bully. You’re not wanted here.”

David’s face went white with rage before darkening to a red so dark it was practically purple. “You’re a freak too! Only a freak would be friends with another freak!” the boy screamed, towering over the much smaller Jessica. “You should have listened, New Girl; you should have stayed away from the freak. Now, you’ve thrown your lot in with her, so you’ll get treated the same way!”

With that, the boy reached around Jessica and grabbed up Jessica’s shiny new hardcover copy of The Joy Luck Club, raising it high above his head. Jessica jumped up, trying to get the book back from the much taller boy, but David sneered and just lifted it higher. “This is what happens!” he screamed, as he opened the book and began ripping out pages and tossing them to the muddy ground.

Jessica let loose a wail that could have shattered glass, an animal scream of pain and suffering the likes of which Hermione had never heard someone other than herself make before. Jessica dropped to her knees and tried to pick up all the torn pages, tears spilling thickly from her eyes. Having gotten what he wanted, David dropped the empty cover next to Jessica and ground some pages into the mud with his heel. “Freak,” he spat and turned to walk away. And Hermione saw red.

Her heartbeat pounding in her ears, Hermione stood up abruptly while Jessica remained crying on the floor. “What did she ever do to you?” Hermione screamed, her fingernails cutting half-moon marks into the skin of her palms. A sound like metal twisting and groaning cut through the air as David turned back to face her with fear in his eyes.

“Why are you such a hateful, loathsome, foul human being?” Hermione continued to scream, stepping toward the boy threateningly. A screech tore through the air as the jungle gym that was a few meters away began warping and unwinding itself from its coiled position. David watched the animate jungle gym in poorly disguised fear as the metal coils began to surround him.

“She never did anything to you! I never did anything to you! Why can’t you just leave us alone to read?” Hermione cried, tears blurring her vision as the jungle gym’s components flew at the bully. He let loose a garbled yell as he tried to scramble away but David was too slow and the jungle gym too fast. In no time at all, David was face down on the ground, the metal pieces of the jungle gym forming a human-shaped cage around his body with jagged edges pressing into his skin. 

Hermione swiped at her eyes, a gasp escaping her throat as she saw what had happened. How could that happen? Was it like how the books she wanted from high shelves in the library would just spontaneously appear in her hands? How was that even possible?

“Freak!” David sobbed into the mud, unable to move without injuring himself on the sharp edges of the jungle gym. Hermione looked on with tears in her eyes as David screamed and cried, but turned away to face her new friend.

“Do you need some help?” Hermione asked, crouching down to help Jessica pick up her book pages. Jessica scrambled away from Hermione, clutching her mud-stained pages in trembling hands. 

“You… you…” she mumbled, and Hermione once more tried to move toward the girl. A little scream issued from Jessica’s throat and Hermione froze in place. “You are a freak!” Jessica yelled at last, tears leaking from her eyes once more. “Leave me alone, Freak!”

Hermione flinched back like she had been slapped as that hateful word issued from Jessica’s mouth. Tears dripping down her cheeks again, Hermione straightened up and went to grab her book from the bench. Jessica again screamed and scrambled away from Hermione and Hermione felt her heart break in two. “I’m sorry,” she whispered and scurried away as the sobbing boy caught in a metal cage began gaining attention.

Hermione had gained and lost her first friend in one day, the day before her eleventh birthday, and it hurt. She ran home as fast as she could, sucking in heaving breaths that burned her lungs as tears continued to track down her face. Keeping her head down, Hermione prayed that no one would see her crying as she tried to get home as quickly as possible. 

Turning onto her street, Hermione gasped out a sob as she slowed down to a walk. Why did the jungle gym do that? It was supposed to stay stationary where it was, but just like the books that would suddenly appear, it moved! And it scared Jessica into not wanting to be her friend anymore. Just when she had finally gotten a friend…

As caught up in her thoughts as she was, Hermione didn’t notice that there was someone in front of her until she ran into him. Falling back heavily onto her butt, Hermione looked up at the person she ran into and noticed a large nose set in a grim sort of face with close-cropped hair and ears that stuck out like jet fins.

“Woah, you okay down there?” the man asked in a thick Northern accent as he reached out a hand to her. “I didn’t mean to run into you, little lady.”

Hermione sniffed and ran a hand across her eyes before giving him a watery smile. “It’s fine; it was my fault anyway,” she mumbled, grasping his hand so he could hoist her up. “I’m very sorry to have run into you, Mr.-?”

“Doctor, actually,” the man seemed to chirp, pulling her up as if she weighed nothing. “Have you been crying?”

Hermione’s tremulous smile disappeared as her grip tightened on her book. “No, it’s okay. Thank you again, Doctor, but I’ll be going home now.”

Hermione tried to move around him, but the man, the Doctor, stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “You have been crying, haven’t you?”

Hermione hiccuped a sob and buried her face in her hand. “I just- I just finally got a friend, my first friend, and now she doesn’t want to be my friend and it’s my birthday tomorrow and I still don’t have any friends and I don’t understand why weird things keep happening and I just wanted a friend and-“

The Doctor crouched down in front of the crying girl with a solemn look on his face. “Now, now, wait just a second. I’m sure it’s nothing and she’ll want to be your friend tomorrow,” the Doctor tried to console the crying girl but that only made Hermione cry harder.

“But she won’t! She’ll call me a freak and avoid me just like everyone else. I thought that this year would be different, that I would finally have a friend to celebrate my birthday with for the first time, but she turned out just like the rest of them and I’m going to be alone again,” Hermione sobbed and the Doctor stiffened a bit though his hands continued rubbing her back soothingly.

“Well, if she called you a freak then she doesn’t deserve to be your friend!” he stated passionately. “You can make much better friends than her. Hey, I’ll be your friend!”

Hermione’s cries lessened as she looked up at the funny looking man. “You, you will?” she stuttered, hope shining brightly in her eyes.

“Of course I will! It would be an honor to be your first friend, Miss…?”

“Hermione. Hermione Granger,” Hermione burst out excitedly, a huge smile breaking out over her face.

“Hermione Granger, then. Like I said, I’m the Doctor. And I’m your first friend.”

Hermione smiled so wide she thought her face would split in two and the man’s answering grin made his ears stick out even more than they already did.

“Fantastic! So now, what shall we do first?”


	2. The Second (Age 13)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Doctor, what is this?" Inquisitive ochre eyes narrowed at the small glass bauble while a mane of chocolate hair whipped around a heart shaped face in the Scottish wind.
> 
> "Why, does Hermione Granger actually not know something for once?" the Doctor replied, a cheeky smile on his face while the young witch glared at him.
> 
> "You should know better than anyone that I don't know everything, Doctor," Hermione sniffed, glaring up at the Time Lord while shifting the odd glass bauble in her palm.

002

"Doctor, what is this?" Inquisitive ochre eyes narrowed at the small glass bauble while a mane of chocolate hair whipped around a heart shaped face in the Scottish wind.

"Why, does Hermione Granger actually not know something for once?" the Doctor replied, a cheeky smile on his face while the young witch glared at him.

"You should know better than anyone that I don't know everything, Doctor," Hermione sniffed, glaring up at the Time Lord while shifting the odd glass bauble in her palm.

The Doctor let out a short laugh and Hermione couldn't help the smile that split her face at the sound. She had known the Doctor for a few years now; he would pop in and out of her life sporadically sometimes older, sometimes younger, sometimes with a blonde girl or a dark haired man (Rose and Jack, Hermione's brain supplied but she ignored the voice), but always with the same face. Hermione had become great at detecting the Doctor's relative 'age' after the first few times that he had visited her and didn't remember things they had done before or talked about things they hadn't done yet.

It was Hermione's idea to keep a journal, something that would enable them to find out where they were in each other's respective timelines without giving up a surprise or changing the future. So she knew that this Doctor was much younger than the previous one that came with the girl and the man (Jack and Rose that same voice corrected her, but she pushed it down viciously, jealous of their ability to travel with the Doctor when he wouldn't let her, wouldn't even ask). He was not young enough to not remember her, but still young enough that happiness and laughter was still a foreign concept, something he still did not do enough even when he was older and had companions with him.

Which brings her back to the odd little glass sphere lying quite innocuously in the center of her palm. It was a birthday gift, he had said, something that would help her with her upcoming years at school. (He was oddly cryptic sometimes, like he knew too many things that hadn't happened yet, that would happen in the future, and it made him so sad). But he refused to give her any other hints and Hermione felt her curiosity push back everything else that was crowding her mind.

"Doctor," she drawled, her tone just a pinch above whining, "why won't you just tell me what it is?"

The small smile that cracked the Doctor's lips made Hermione's heart skip in her chest as she barely suppressed a fist pump. Each time she could crack his stoic façade, especially when he was this young and still so very battle-worn, Hermione counted as a great victory. Instead of latching onto him as she so wanted to do, she settled with a beaming smile and leaning in toward him slightly with her hands on her hips.

Bending over to match her height, the Doctor pointed one finger at her nose and proceeded to poke it. Hermione scrunched her face and batted his finger away and succeeded in drawing a laugh from the Doctor. Her manic grin gentling Hermione grasped his hands in hers, tracing the scars with her fingertips, before inquiring again. "But really, Doctor, why can't you just tell me what it is? You know that I won't stop looking for what it is and it will be so much easier for the both of us if you just tell me what this little glass bauble can do."

"Fine, fine, Hermione!" he chuckled, gently pulling his hands from hers. "I'll tell you, but only because I know you won't let it go if I don't tell you."

He went quiet and after a beat of silence Hermione impatiently blurted out, "Well? Come on then, Doctor, what is it?!"

The Doctor smiled at her gently and ruffled her hair a bit. Glaring up at him, Hermione was just about to tell him to quit it when he said, "It's a TARDIS."

Stopping in her tracks, Hermione looked from him down to the little glass bauble, TARDIS, in confusion. "But, it's… it's so small!"

"Well, it's actually a prototype TARDIS, one of the first ones that was ever made," he went on to explain, picking up the mini-TARDIS gently and twirling it between the callused pads of his fingers as it caught the light. "This is what the Time Lords planted to grow the TARDISes, the larger ones like the one that I have."

"So if I planted it, I could have a TARDIS like the one that you have?" Hermione asked, nearly vibrating in excitement at the prospect of having her very own TARDIS in which she could travel all of time and space (but she couldn't help but wonder if having a TARDIS would be worth it if the Doctor wasn't there to experience it with her…).

"No," the Doctor said sharply, and Hermione recoiled at his aggressive tone, her grip tightening on the tiny TARDIS. Sighing, the Doctor ran a hand over his face before beginning again more gently, "Earth does not have the right minerals that a TARDIS would need to grow. If you tried to plant this here, it would die."

"Oh," Hermione said softly, taking the mini-TARDIS back from him and cradling it gently this time. "Okay then. That makes sense. So, does this do what a full-grown TARDIS does?"

"No, it only goes back in time in your current universe," the Doctor explained. "If you put the TARDIS's chain over you and spin this little thing up here at the top, it will coincide with one hour of time. It will take you bodily back to the past though, just like a full-grown TARDIS. And just like when you go back in time with a full-grown TARDIS, you need to be extra careful that you do not cross paths with the past version of yourself. Crossing your own timeline is dangerous, and you might go mad if you see yourself in the past."

Hermione, who had been growing more and more excited with each word that exited the Doctor's lips, was hopping up and down in place while hanging on his every word. As he finished, Hermione launched herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck tightly as she squealed a litany of thanks into his ear. Feeling his arms reluctantly come up to encircle her back gently, Hermione only squeezed him tighter and vowed that she would not abuse this gift that her Doctor had given her.

A TARDIS! A real TARDIS! Take that, blonde girl and dark haired man (Rose and Jack, that voice in her head screamed but Hermione continued to ignore it). The Doctor had given her a TARDIS and she doubted that he had ever given his "companions" anything so precious as this. It almost made it okay that he refused to take her with him. Now she could journey into the past on her own! And, now that she thought about it, being able to travel into the past meant that she wouldn't have to choose between which classes to take for her third year; she could just take them all! Oh, the Doctor had given her the best gift she could have ever asked for!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I am so sorry, I am an awful person. School and everything was just so busy that I barely had time to sleep let alone work on any of my WIPs. Please forgive me and enjoy this new chapter! If you also enjoy "rascal" please be patient and the next chapter should be out soon!


End file.
